I am new to the job and still playing around with it a lot. I have been solo'ing some KSNM, BCNM, and Aby NMs for practice since this is an Aby leech job and I want to make sure I get the hang of it. The NMs and battles have also been excellent for skillups and for learning distances, which rages and wards to use, etc.

Gear wise I am 4/5 on my AFv3 +1 (I'm working on +2 for other jobs, so this one will be +1 for a while unfortunately). I have 3/5 Relic gear (missing head and body, which I plan to go farm), evoker's, caller's earring, caller's pendant, yinyang, soulscourge, and all elemental staves.

I know from reading the forums that I can macro in my bloodpact delay gear, activate my bloodpact, then macro in my damage gear (appropriate for physical or magical). But I am not using spellcast, so I'm curious about timing. Basically how quick do my fingers need to be do do it right?

My plans for macros are to have set 1 be my directory. Each thing will lead me to another set based on the avatar I want to summon. The macro will also equip any appropriate gear (my elemental staff) for that avatar. In each individual set, I will have the most use rages on ctrl and wards on alt (or vice versus). Plus I will have my JA and pet commands built into these. (I have an 8 set macro pallet for scholar, so I'm pretty sure this will work out similarly)

I'm a little confused on how to build out my elemental siphon macros, but I'm guessing it will just be about timing? I think the below is correct (in my head) but I want to be sure.

Sacrifice Torque is a must-have. Not only should you use it for every physical pact you ever do, because it's awesome like that, but you can also use it to wake yourself from sleep anytime you have an avatar out because it drains 8hp/tick while equipped. Aside from that you have all the important stuff covered. The rest is obvious (summoning earring, vox grip, etc.) but not critical like the Sac Torque.

As far as macros, I don't use Spellcast either so I think I can help. I used a style very similar to yours: My primary macro set is just a starting point with a macro to summon each avatar. Summoning an avatar takes me to that avatar's specific macro page. Here's how I laid them out: 1. Primary + Carbuncle 2. Fenrir 3. Ifrit 4. Titan 5. Leviathan 6. Garuda 7. Shiva 8. Ramuh 9. Diabolos 0. Spirits + Alex/Odin

Note that I did them in order of the elemental days. :) That was to help me memorize day order. Anyway, each summon also equips the appropriate equipment for that avatar like you mentioned. Then on each avatar's macro set I have two important macros: Alt+8: Perp down gear (goes back to this avatar's perp down gear) Alt+9: BP timer gear (goes to -15 BP timer)

Then each BP macro only needs to worry about one thing: the equipment that BP needs to land in. For example here would be my cycle to summon Pred Claws:

That's just going off memory but you can see how the BP timer & Perp timer macros just become a part of your process. This gives each BP macro 5 lines to equip gear specific to that BP, as long as it's one of the 6 item slots covered by your macro to return to Perp Down gear.

The magian staves help here a LOT. I'm talking HUUUGE if you aren't a Spellcast user / Windower macro user, because they have both perp down and a massive BP timer reduction. It makes hitting the BP timer cap much easier and use less macro lines.

I am quickly becoming a HUGE fan of Garuda and Predator Claws. I have been playing in Aby with her using VV/RR/GH (I don't have SS yet) and hot ****! Even with my gimp skill, I'm pulling off 5k Predator Claws, which is ****!

I have also played with Shiva the blm trilogy of atmas and while Heavenly Strike is nice dmg, I'm not as impressed.

ToM staves /sigh ... I honestly cannot say if I will ever get around to these. If I do, I will probably only do Garuda's and Shiva's. I have done the Cure Potency staff for whm, the Ice, Fire, Thunder, Dark, and almost done with Water dmg staves for blm. I still need to finish Air and Earth dmg staves before I even consider working on the smn ones!!

All I think about when I start another trial is ... why oh why do I keep leveling mage jobs?!? Eventually I would also like to do the MACC staves for Ice, Earth, Wind, and Dark for rdm as well. Oh well, guess I will be doing staff trials for the rest of my FFXI career!

Jeez that's a lot of staves :( If you get the time for Garuda & Shiva staves that will be more than enough. Those are the two I've done so far, and working on Ramuh right now. (Also did Cure staff & Pet:MAB staff.)

Also, Sanguine Scythe isn't as good as you'd expect. I'm not sure why that is, but the three you are using now are pretty much accepted as the best for physical DD on SMN. It's what I've had the best experience with, anyway. RR+GH is the only way to cap crit rate and dropping one causes a massive drop in consistency, and the STR from VV is also very important for the big numbers.

I'm with you on not being as impressed by Heavenly Strike. It has its uses though!

EDIT: Oh and as far as actual timing, you don't need to wait at all after going into BP timer gear. It's basically Alt+9, Alt+5, wait... then Alt+8.

Yes, yes it is, LOL Luckily on the dmg paths, after I get past the weather requirements (pending the mob type is in Aby) my BF gears up blu and we AoE, usually takes ~hour to finish off a trial with 200-250 mobs. He sets up CW and I finish with whatever element I am working on. After we blow through a few trials, I usually sit with an unfinished staff for a couple of weeks because it really burns you out doing this over and over again.

You don't really need the -perp staffs either, you can get free avatars and -15secs in gear and elemental staffs alone. ToM staffs are best at tweaking gear sets, so you can put them at a lower priority if you need to.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2011 11:41am by jlejeune

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"And I'm prepared to passionately argue this point until nothing makes sense anymore. If that doesn't work, then the hours upon hours of whining will." -Red Mage Statscowski

I am quickly becoming a HUGE fan of Garuda and Predator Claws. I have been playing in Aby with her using VV/RR/GH (I don't have SS yet) and hot ****! Even with my gimp skill, I'm pulling off 5k Predator Claws, which is ****!

I have also played with Shiva the blm trilogy of atmas and while Heavenly Strike is nice dmg, I'm not as impressed.

I also am a harpy advocate, as garuda is my favorite. I also favored wind blade before Abyssea.

Heavenly Strike is consistent at least, but predator claws is usually better, you guys are right. The other nice thing about Garuda's Predator Claws setup is that it has a MUCH higher DoT from melee hits than a magical setup. 300 damage criticals add up over time. Should she hit say 12 times between bloodpacts for ~300 a hit, that's ~3600 extra damage. Shiva with a heavenly strike setup would do far less (and also have a lower accuracy rate without +50 dex).

The one nice thing about Shiva though that you should appreciate in Abyssea is diamond dust. We were doing some pulls the other day with about six people...

BLU pulled 15-20 mobs at once. BLM and BLU would sleepga. Shiva would use Diamond Dust for ~4400 on all of the mobs. Blu would use Temporal Shift as it was going off, and then BLM and BLU would sleep. Either killed with another diamond dust, or the WAR would fell cleave. RDM healed and refreshed. Restore chests went to me on summoner first, and then the warrior for mighty strikes / 300 tp fell cleave. It worked out really nice.

Diamond Dust is the strongest because of Beyond, but Astral Flow is pretty nice because it doesn't get the multiple target damage reduction like -Ga and -Ja spells do. She will do 4400 to one target, or 100 targets. It gets really fun depending on your setup. And it goes well with black mages for mass killing

So I finally got around to setting up my macros this morning and they are a LIFE SAVOR!! WoE (my new home) has become 10x easier, even with the horrid lag problems! I got the timing down on my siphon macro so 1/2 the time I don't even see the elemental before I release it again! Loving smn!!

I'm in for Ramuh. Ramuh stun has extremely low cast time, and it hits even with my gimped skill. Very decent physical and magic rage, and a consistent stun is making this guy more and more enjoyable for me.

This is kind of specific to me, but in my mind one of the primary divinsions between jobs in ffxi is whether or not it has a stun. So, given my mind set, Ramuh has just raised smn in one category it was sorely lacking.

I like the new Ramuh stun skill, but I haven't found a lot of practical applications for it yet. I need to play around with it more and see what it'll be useful for. Think I started the Ramuh staff but just now getting it started.